Humans

Everyone seems to agree that opposites attract. Young and old people, happy and distressed couples, single folks and married partners – all apparently buy the classic adage about love. Relationship experts have written books based on this assumption. It’s even been internalised by people who are on the hunt for a partner, with 86

Kids can and should practice the skill of learning if they want a fighting chance at fulfilling all those lofty goals their parents set for them. But some people keep studying – and thinking – the same way all their lives without improving their methods. Thankfully, cognitive science has taken a look at how people actually

Okay everyone, it’s time to talk about female ejaculation – because it’s not as mysterious as many would like to believe. Scientists have found evidnece that women who ‘squirt’ are expelling one of two different types of liquid – one pure urine, and the other a combination of urine and fluid from the female prostate

Okay everyone, it’s time to talk about female ejaculation – because it’s not as mysterious as many would like to believe. Scientists have found evidence that women who ‘squirt’ are expelling one of two different types of liquid – one pure urine, and the other a combination of urine and fluid from the female prostate

Western society has a rather specific view of what a good childhood should be like; protecting, sheltering and legislating to ensure compliance with it. However, perceptions of childhood vary greatly with geography, culture and time. What was it like to be a child in prehistoric times, for example – in the absence of toys, tablets

You wouldn’t think that a flimsy piece of paper could inflict such sharp pain on the human body, but of all life’s little annoyances, paper cuts are one of the worst. While not overly serious in the grand scheme of things, they sure provide a lot of pain for such a minor injury. So why

If your Valentines Day isn’t living up to your expectations, don’t worry – researchers are reminding us just how much less romantic things could get through the #AcademicValentines hashtag. The hashtag has gone viral with academics taking to Twitter to celebrate their love for their research… and also highlight some of the not so

The next time you’re standing in a motel bathroom staring at the previous guest’s hair inside the drain, maybe with a nail file in your hand and a look of nauseous determination on your face, consider: From whence came this hair? What great things might its owner have done, or go on to do? Do

She told doctors that she wanted to breast-feed her baby. She explained that her partner was pregnant but was not planning to breast-feed when the child was born, so she wanted to take it on herself. The 30-year-old, who is transgender, was willing to accept the risks. Following months of hormone therapy last year,

They say money can’t buy happiness, but let’s be honest, they say a lot of things – and they’re not always right. When it comes to income, scientists say there actually is an ideal yearly amount we can earn to feel emotionally content and satisfied – and believe it or not, if you have too

Archaeologists in Sweden have unearthed human remains of a type never before found in Scandinavia. The enigmatic Mesolithic bones show evidence of blunt force trauma to several skulls – and evidence that heads were displayed on stakes. But none of it is straightforward, which presents a number of really intriguing mysteries. For one, the bones

Obviously travelling at warp speed isn’t a natural state of existence for most terrestrial organisms, but we never knew just how harmful the effects of maximum warp velocities could be on human beings – until now. A new study published – yes, published – in an ‘American’ science journal (and accepted by three others)

If you’re preoccupied with infidelity, new research may help set your mind at ease. Two longitudinal studies have revealed some of the factors that correlate with cheating – and, on the flipside, with fidelity, at least in the short term. Over 3.5 years, researchers at Florida State University followed 233 newly married couples across

Decisions are a part of life. At various times you may need to choose the best vacation spot, job candidate, babysitter, or place to live. Your most important decision may be figuring out your best romantic partner. Relationships matter – a lot. They have implications for your health, your reactions to stress and even

Give Tinder a break and take yourself on a date tonight. Being single has a handful of benefits, scientific research has found. Alone time is one of them. Single people are more likely to not only embrace solitude, but benefit from it, recent studies have suggested. Bella DePaulo, a psychologist at the University of

Anyone can be late a handful of times, sure, but to be the person who’s always five minutes late (at the earliest) – that’s an art. A frustrating and inconvenient art. Or, a side effect of your personality traits, scientists have found. So what is it that causes some people to constantly miss trains, make

People throw all kinds of oily, greasy, messy stuff down the drain at home. Now, some of that sewage is taking its revenge above-ground. Hunks of a massive London “fatberg” are going on display this Friday at the Museum of London. The stomach-churning rock-hard mass, which weighed as much as ten double-decker buses underground,

Modern humans migrated to Britain around 45,000 years ago, and it had been assumed that paler skin had evolved shortly after. But a human man that lived in Britain 10,000 years ago during the Mesolithic had dark to black skin, DNA analysis reveals – showing that reduced skin pigmentation arrived in the British Isles much

A village in the northern Malay Peninsula has been known to anthropologists for some time, but linguists have just figured out that these settled hunter-gatherers use their very own, previously undocumented language. Comprising just 280 people, the villagers speak an Aslian language newly named Jedek by linguists at Lund University in Sweden. “Jedek is

A team of researchers has put a straight-forward critical thinking process to the test on 42 common climate science denier claims, showing we can help our friends and family sort fact from fake in just six easy steps. It’s said we live in a post-truth age. Thankfully there are ways we can slow the

This optical illusion of two photos of a brick road is stumping Reddit and Imgur users. Although these two images look like photos of the same road taken at different angles or heights, they are actually the exact same image. Neither photo was mirrored, flipped, or edited in any way. Reddit user Saberfox said,

These days, many scientists face crazy pressures to publish in high-impact journals and get their work cited, all in order to keep their performance reviews in top shape. But while most just do the best work they can and hope other colleagues will notice, some people end up tempted to help their rankings out, just a little.

It’s not quite mind reading, but it’s close: scientists have been able to identify songs people are listening to just by using fMRI scans of their brains, which measure blood flow and brain activity. The research promises to help us understand both how the mind reacts to music and how future brain interfaces could be developed

From the way you move and sleep, to how you interact with people around you, depression changes just about everything. It is even noticeable in the way you speak and express yourself in writing. Sometimes this ‘language of depression’ can have a powerful effect on others. Just consider the impact of the poetry and

From the way you move and sleep, to how you interact with people around you, depression changes just about everything. It is even noticeable in the way you speak and express yourself in writing. Sometimes this ‘language of depression’ can have a powerful effect on others. Just consider the impact of the poetry and

The 2,400-year-old skulls faced several directions, and the 10 dirt-brown, pre-Aztec skeletons fanned out to the edges of an area resembling the cosmic spiral of the Milky Way. Nothing like it has been found before. Mexican archaeologists this week revealed the burial site discovered at Tlalpan, just south of Mexico City, where rich soil,

The 2,400-year-old skulls faced several directions, and the 10 dirt-brown, pre-Aztec skeletons fanned out to the edges of an area resembling the cosmic spiral of the Milky Way. Nothing like it has been found before. Mexican archaeologists this week revealed the burial site discovered at Tlalpan, just south of Mexico City, where rich soil,

In our increasingly busy lives, sleep can feel pretty unproductive. But just because you’re not awake, doesn’t mean stuff isn’t happening. To make you really appreciate all the complex things your body during those eight (or, more realistically, six) hours you’re out each night, artist Jan Diehm from the Huffington Post has created this fascinating

In our increasingly busy lives, sleep can feel pretty unproductive. But just because you’re not awake, doesn’t mean stuff isn’t happening. To make you really appreciate all the complex things your body during those eight (or, more realistically, six) hours you’re out each night, artist Jan Diehm from the Huffington Post has created this fascinating

UK native James Morgan was studying photography in London when he read about a group of seafaring Southeast Asian nomads who had survived the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami with almost no casualties. “They understood the ocean so well that they headed for protection before the tsunami hit,” Morgan told Business Insider. An anthropologist by

UK native James Morgan was studying photography in London when he read about a group of seafaring Southeast Asian nomads who had survived the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami with almost no casualties. “They understood the ocean so well that they headed for protection before the tsunami hit,” Morgan told Business Insider. An anthropologist by

Pyramids peek above the canopy of the Guatemalan jungle in Central America, but the roots of the ruins run a lot deeper than it looks. A LIDAR (“light” and “radar”) survey of the area has revealed 60,000 previously unknown structures – suggesting a vast megalopolis that was home to millions more people than previously thought.

NASA confirmed an incredible discovery Tuesday – that an amateur radio astronomer, on the hunt for a classified government satellite, stumbled instead upon signals from a spacecraft that had been thought lost 12 years earlier, raising hope that NASA can resurrect a mission that changed our understanding of the “invisible ocean” around the Earth.

We are all children of Africa. As members of the hominin species Homo sapiens, you and I are the product of millions of years of shared evolutionary history of life on Earth. But as a species we are relatively recent, emerging between 400,000 and 300,000 years ago in East Africa from indigenous archaic populations.

Last month, a zoologist left a four-star review on Amazon for a tea strainer, which he had been using to sift ants. No big deal. The review sat quietly on the site until this week, when other scientists found it, shared it and instantly started a Twitter trend. We lay-folk have long known that

On 13 January, the state of Hawaii spent 38 minutes in terror after a text alert mistakenly warned of an incoming nuclear missile attack. If you heard about the mistake and wondered what you would or should do if you learned a nuclear bomb was heading your way, you’re not alone. It has been

On 13 January, the state of Hawaii spent 38 minutes in terror after a text alert mistakenly warned of an incoming nuclear missile attack. If you heard about the mistake and wondered what you would or should do if you learned a nuclear bomb was heading your way, you’re not alone. It has been

The game dice we use today are as fair as we can design them – but that wasn’t always the case. And now researchers have analysed the history of dice to work out when things changed, and why people didn’t care about these probabilities until a certain turning point in civilisation. Researchers from UC

In the world of maths problems, some questions are easy for 11-year-olds to answer, some are difficult, and some are… kind of impossible. This story is about the latter category. Fifth-grade primary school students at Nanchong Shunqing Primary School in south-west China were diligently making their way through a recent exam paper when they

A prominent US scientist has claimed researchers in Florida succeeded in breeding a human-chimp hybrid called a ‘humanzee’ in controversial, long-rumoured 1920s research. Evolutionary psychologist Gordon G. Gallup, Jr., who achieved renown for his pioneering mirror self-recognition experiments with animals in the 1970s, says a former university professor told him the hybrid creature was born

For centuries, it’s been the book no human can understand, but we may finally now be able to read it – thanks to machines invented a half-millennia after it was written. The Voynich manuscript, often called the world’s most mysterious book, consists of some 240 pages of cryptic text written in an intricate, unknown language,

Your body is hot. Depending on the time of day, and where the thermometer is placed, it runs somewhere between 35 to 38 degrees Celsius, or 95 to 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Little organs called mitochondria, slotted into your cells like batteries in a TV clicker, produce most of this body heat. Mitochondria are the powerhouses

On Wednesday, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced they have moved the Doomsday Clock forward so it now rests 2 minutes before midnight. The Doomsday Clock is a symbol which represents the likelihood of a human-made global catastrophe. Ever since 1998, when India and Pakistan started testing nuclear weapons, the Doomsday Clock has been

It’s impressive enough that our human brains are made up of the same ‘star stuff‘ that forms the Universe, but new research suggests that this might not be the only thing the two have in common. Just like the Universe, our brains might be programmed to maximise disorder – similar to the principle of

We all know that maths is really hard. So hard, in fact, that there’s literally a whole Wikipedia page dedicated to unsolved mathematical problems, despite some of the greatest minds in the world working on them around the clock. But as Avery Thompson points out at Popular Mechanics, from the outset at least, some

It’s one of the most fascinating and well-built structures in existence, but researchers have shown that the Great Pyramid of Giza is actually lopsided, thanks to an error builders made during construction some 4,500 years ago. This error has led to the west side of the pyramid being slightly longer than the east side,

One of the consequences of a warming planet is receding glaciers, and archaeologists working on ice sheets on highest peaks of Norway have discovered a treasure trove of artefacts dating back as far as 4000 BCE. They include clothes, weaponry, and even ancient skis, and more than 2,000 relics have been recovered from the

From getting beyond drunk at a friend’s party, to some seriously questionable outfit choices, teenagers often do things that seem outlandishly stupid. But we now know why: the areas of the brain that control decision-making don’t fully develop until early adulthood. A teen’s developing brain places them at greater risk of being reactive in